Parliament opens its Fall 2016 regular session

The regular fall session of Parliament started on October 3, 2016. President of Mongolia Ts.Elbegdorj, Prime Minister J.Erdenebat, ministers of the cabinet, members of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court, officials from the General Prosecutor’s Office, representatives of other official bodies overseen by Parliament, and diplomatic representatives from abroad participated in the opening of this year’s regular fall session.

At the beginning of the session, the Speaker of Parliament highlighted that the trust of foreign investors is still weak. “Today, bureaucracy, pressure on business entities, an unstable legal environment, misunderstandings, and poor policies, rather than external factors, are breaking our relationships with investors,” he said. The Speaker also noted that it is vital to create a healthy legal environment and a mechanism for people to indirectly participate in the monitoring of the financial activities of government institutions, the resolutions and decisions of government officials, the budgets of state institutions, and the personal interests, assets, and income of public servants.

He also underlined the importance of precise calculations and the structure of such a mechanism, which should appropriately align with legal, labor, and financial factors. M.Enkhbold also encouraged changing the existing evaluation system for Members of Parliament, with an MP’s performance evaluated based on qualitative and not quantitative results. He mentioned that the unemployment rate is increasing, and while the country is currently facing deflation, buyers and consumers are becoming more passive. In order to overcome current economic difficulties in a short period of time, M.Enkhbold said that Parliament is open to discussing government projects on utilizing and developing the mining industry.

In the Fall 2016 session, Parliament will discuss drafts of the state budget, and the 2017 budgets for the Human Development Fund and Social Insurance Fund. The session will also include discussion of the essential principles of socioeconomic development and monetary policy in 2017, the criminal procedure code, law enforcement procedure code, prosecutorial law, domestic violence, the election law, amendments to the Criminal Code and business income tax, Mongolia’s international relations, and the main principles of improving legislative procedures through 2020.

The UB Post was first founded in 1996, and has since become Mongolia’s leading English-language news outlet. As part of the broader Mongol News group, the UB Post provides comprehensive coverage of social, economic and political developments in Mongolia and elsewhere.